By Prior Beharry
UNITED National Congress (UNC) Senator David Nakhid has compared children in Trinidad and Tobago under the People’s National Movement (PNM) government to those suffering in worn-torn Gaza.
He was speaking on Wednesday during the Budget debate in the Senate.
Nakhid said the PNM has done nothing to protect children but politicised child and sexual abuse.
He said he and Independent Senator Anthony Vieira are on a committee to visit children’s homes.
Nakhid said on three occasions, Vieira was unable to get a quorum of members to go to the homes. He said, “The PNM members of that committee, they always have something to do.”
He said there were about 6,000 reports of abuse against children registered by the Children’s Authority and that figure could be about 10,000 because “many of those cases of child sexual abuse, they go unreported.”
Nakhid said children were suffering with sexual, domestic abuse and bullying in schools.
He said, “I hate to make this macabre comparison but it is like watching the settler colonial state of Israel in their propaganda.’
Nakhid said, “I know it might be a macabre comparison but what is it to a mother in Gaza, in Beirut whose child has nothing to eat or a child here in Tunapuna or Morvant or Laventille who has nothing to eat.
“What is it to them? It’s the same suffering of a child that you all (PNM) have not addressed.
“So either you die under the guns of the settler colonial entity called Israel or you die by the policies and programmes of this corrupt incompetent PNM government.”
He said the PNM has the country in a mess.
Nakhid said the PNM wanted to remove Columbus’ three ships on the Coat of Arms and replace it with the steelpan but have spent little time discussing the national instrument in the Senate.
He said the PNM like to talk about the pan yard model but this has been in existence since the pan was invented.
Nakhid said, “The pan yard model to protect the community… to address the economic needs of the community was there from the first that why pan was created.”
